Shared Reading Time

This summer, the objectives for shared reading have centered around VOCABULARY and READING FLUENCY.   

Remember, there are 5 components of teaching reading:
1. Phonemic Awareness
2. Phonics
3. Vocabulary
4. Fluency
5. Comprehension

All of these components are integrated.  If you can't sound out a word, you won't read fluently. If you're not reading fluently, you won't comprehend the text well.

We spend 10 minutes on vocab, and 10 minutes on reading.  All of my vocabulary is on a PPT...it just helps me stay organized! :)  And I also put the poems on the PPT.

I've also been focusing on vocabulary development during Shared Reading.  So for each vocab word from the poems, my students make a vocab flash card.

• Monday - they write the words and parts of speech on separate index cards, and then they look for the vocab words in the poem and highlight them (this ties in to being fluent readers...they must be accurate to be fluent!)
• Tuesday - they draw a picture to show the meaning
• Wednesday - they add the definition
• Thursday - they write a sentence on the back
• Friday - we play games with the words   

*for my favorite vocab game, students hold the word (without looking) to their head and others have to describe it to them (kind of like Taboo)...an awesome co-worker taught me this one! :)
I've used this shared reading time to FOCUS on explicitly teaching students what it means to be a FLUENT reader.  I've used these rubrics to help them rate themselves and each other.  On Monday, I don't use a rubric, because I model, give them time to practice, and front-load vocabulary.  But Tuesday-Friday, I just focus on one rubric a day.  I found these rubrics on http://www.fcrr.org/ which has an AMAZING number of resources!

Student-Friendly Fluency Rubrics (from http://www.fcrr.org/)

 I hope this gives you insight into my sequencing, planning, and pacing during shared reading!

Text Analysis - When do I ask questions?

Some of you have asked why I do the text analysis portion of my read-alouds during reading instead of after.  Well, I actually do a little bit of both. HOWEVER, I do definitely incorporate deeper thinking during reading.  Why? Because that's what good readers do.  We think before, during, and after.  So my questioning depends on multiple things:

1.  When is the best time to stop and analyze based on the reading strategy and objective?  For example, if I'm teaching how to make a prediction and using predictions to analyze a character, then I need to stop during reading.  You can't make many predictions after a book is over (though you can make few).  So my modeling and questioning will be during the text.  BUT I will still often go deeper with the text at the end.
2.  What is the best way to keep my students engaged and comprehending the text? This is a hard one, and I'm still learning. Sometimes, stopping and modeling chops up the text too much and distracts students.  (I still do this! It's hard for me!)  They need to hear a flow of a text without it being interrupted, but if I'm modeling strategies it can be difficult to do that.  On the other hand stopping and analyzing during reading can actually help them to process the text and comprehend what is going on and allows you to check for understanding and incorporate turn-and-talk and other engagement strategies.
3. What do I have time for? Sometimes, you just don't have time to go deep during reading. Sometimes you do.

So...what do you do with all that??? First, you've just got to know that there are always different opinions and perspectives.  So, you've go to believe in yourself as a professional and do what works best for your kids!  It's about them.  What's going to help them learn most?  What's going to help them love reading most?  What's going to help them master the objective most?

I know this is a slightly vague post...but the point of text analysis isn't when you do it.  The purpose of text analysis is analyzing the text. The end.  As adults, we analyze text before, during, and after. SO what is important as a teacher is thinking through those three segments of reading.  Post-it your read-alouds and plan out questions that will engage students before, during, and after reading...and plan out questions where it seems most purposeful in mastering the objective.  You can ALWAYS go deeper after reading, and it's important to.  But you don't want to miss out on engaging conversations during reading if it will help students learn. :)

Hope this helps!!

Reading Strategies

Hi Fellow Teachers!

I hear you've been learning about reading strategies this week and have begun incorporating them into your lessons! I LOVE READING STRATEGIES.  We use these strategies ALL the time as adults (in fact, we use multiple strategies at a time), but sometimes they are hard to break down for our kiddos.  If we keep the end in mind...we want our students to use all these strategies in one text, just like we would do. So to get them there...YOU'VE GOT TO BREAK IT DOWN ONE AT A TIME.  So...start with one. Practice it. Then, add on.  As students begin to practice these reading strategies and become familiar with the academic vocabulary, you can model using multiple strategies in your read-alouds and think-alouds. :)

For my students, I made this reading wall (see picture) that is in my classroom library.  I actually cover it up in the beginning of the year and make it a big deal when I "reveal" it.  (It's actually blank with the thought bubbles and the words "Good readers STOP and THINK to..."  The point of the mystery is to get them invested in wanting to be good readers by talking about why we read, what we can read, and what not.  Then, I incorporate a reading strategy with the majority of my read-alouds and objectives.  I start with making text-self connections because this is what invests us in reading more than anything.  (Plug for lower elementary: it's okay to not even start with a strategy, you can start with "good readers stop and think to notice things..." and get your kids to just start noticing details, pictures, etc. since they are all new readers!) Okay moving on.. After teaching T-S connections, I usually move on to questioning because students are naturally curious (and it connects with tons of standards).  I add to the thinking clouds through out the year one-by-one so that students aren't overwhelmed, and so that they learn to reference it. 

With each strategy, I also teach a hand motion so that as students listen to my read-alouds, they can just use the hand signals to show me that they are thinking about what we are reading.  Eventually students will use multiple hand signals (which is the goal!)   Just like Ashley C. said about objectives during our lesson planning clinic...we don't want to make it a mystery what kids are supposed to learn.  I've found that these posters help me to explicitly teach the strategies so that my students truly know what good readers do.   AND they help give my EL students (and all students, really) sentence frames to communicate their thinking as they read and use the strategies.


I hope this gets you pumped about teaching your students READING STRATEGIES! :)  It's the BEST when your kids tell you that they made connections or made an inference during independent reading! :)

Read-Aloud Engagement Strategies

Monday I read-aloud an article titled "The Upside of Dyslexia." For my amazing EL babies, it was a little hard to fully comprehend, and it didn't use the most kid-friendly language. (Though, it was an awesome article and I think 100% worth using!)

Side note: It's okay for read-alouds to be above students' heads (to a degree).  During read-alouds, teachers do most of the work with modeling, scaffolding, anchor charts, think-alouds, and what not. This is their chance to engage in above-level texts with teacher support. Levels of support for reading from most teacher support, to least teacher support:

• Read-alouds (can be above their grade level, involves most teacher support)
• Shared Reading (should hit middle range of students, on grade level)
• Guided Reading (leveled grouping, students are grouped according to reading level)
• Independent Reading (students read on their levels, with little to no teacher support)

Okay back to the point...As I taught on Monday, I front-loaded some vocabulary, discussed the celebrities that would be in the article, and gave them insight into what we would be reading about.  I think overall my students were actually very interested in learning about dyslexia (specifically because it connected with Trisha from Thank You, Mr. Falker and because we read about celebrities. HOWEVER, I still felt like engagement could have been better.  So, I reflected:

Here's what I think I did well (feel free to agree/disagree if you observed me):

• Reading with expression: I think I mostly made the non-fiction text seem exciting 
• Students actually exhibit a lot of curiosity when it comes to non-fiction, because they are so curious. I try to model curiosity and how learning from non-fiction is an adventure so that I can affirm/encourage the curiosity that seems to come more natural to children!  Sometimes, schools and our education system teach children to unlearn curiosity...UGH! That's awful!
• Building background knowledge
• Scaffolding with questions and through the use of an anchor chart/table (organized information in a student-friendly way)

Here's what I want to improve:

• Consistent student engagement
• Checks for understanding (I think I should have done a few more comprehension checks throughout the read-aloud and at the end)

So to make my reflecting more meaningful, here are some ideas/strategies I brainstormed that I may use during future read-alouds to increase engagement and accountability:

1. post-it notes: give my students more responsibility by having them listen for an answer, record feelings, or something similar while I read.  So for this particular text, one example: I could have had students write down all of the struggles that the celebrities had during their childhood OR one interesting thing they learned
2. give students a graphic organizer (GO) while I read aloud for them to fill out; for this article I could have given students a "t-chart" GO, on one side they could write "struggles that people with dyslexia have" and on the other side "strengths"
3. more partner share (implementing more comprehension questions/opportunities for students to make connections and share)

Hope that some of my reflections and these ideas are helpful!

Here are some more generic but SUPER HELPFUL ideas on engagement in the classroom by an actual research-based expert:

Marzano's 5 Ways to Get and Keep Your Students Attention

Day 1 Lesson Plan

Hi CM's!  If you want an idea for what to do the first day or to of school, check out this Day 1 Lesson Plan.  We will be reading a book titled More Than Anything Else that is about a black boy post-slavery that wants to learn how to read.  The idea of this lesson plan is three-fold...
    1. to get started with hitting some standards and textual analysis (analyzing character actions,  
        thoughts, words, and feelings)
    2. to connect with their summer reading goal, and
    3. to hit on some class values that will be foundational for our class culture (perseverance and
        curiosity)

Typically, Day 1 I would do 90% procedures, rules, and culture building...but because of the time constraint for the summer...we will be diving right in, so I chose this read aloud for multiple purposes.  Even if you don't use the lesson plan...check out the ANCHOR CHART (charts that anchor content in a visual way for students) at the bottom of the plan.  This type of chart is relevant and useful for multiple lessons throughout the summer AND will be a visual support specifically for our English Language Learners at Cole.

Enjoy!